On January 19, 2025, my youngest daughter, Katie Abraham—only 20 years old—was senselessly killed on Governor Pritzker’s streets in Urbana, Illinois, less than 100 miles from the Governor’s protected mansion in Springfield.
Katie was a passenger in a car with four friends, stopped at a light, when an illegal immigrant driving drunk slammed into them at roughly 80 miles per hour. Katie died at the scene. Another young woman died the next day. The three remaining passengers survived, but with injuries that will follow them for life.
The driver, Julio Cucul-Bol, a Guatemalan national living in Illinois under the Mexican alias Juan Jahaziel Saenz-Suarez, fled immediately. And he didn’t flee alone—others helped him. To this day, we can’t get answers about who assisted him. Was it friends? Associates? NGOs? Organizations? Someone connected to the government? He made it from Urbana to Chicago, boarded a bus headed toward Mexico, and was finally arrested by U.S. Marshals in Milford, Texas.
Here is the truth: Had Biden and Mayorkas still been overseeing the border at that moment, he likely would have crossed and disappeared for good. And he is exactly the type of individual Governor Pritzker shields through the sanctuary policies he continues to defend.
Cucul-Bol entered our state with no background check, no health screening, and no vetting of any kind. In federal court on November 25, he claimed he had no formal education, could not read or write in any language, and did not understand English. His translator explained that his language, Kʼicheʼ, is not even related to Spanish.
Yet this same man is now receiving treatment in a state correctional facility for an incurable communicable infectious disease. He also admitted he had no job and no money.
So how did he own a car?
Who paid for maintenance, insurance, and his nights out?
Were my tax dollars helping support the man who killed my daughter?
Somehow, despite claiming total illiteracy, he even passed a written exam and obtained an Illinois driver’s license. The state refuses to explain how.
This murder was preventable. Federal authorities already knew Cucul-Bol’s real identity and that he had previously been deported. Had Illinois not embraced extreme sanctuary policies—and had the state cooperated with federal partners—Cucul-Bol would have been flagged long before he reached our communities. Katie would still be alive.
Let me be clear: Cucul-Bol killed Katie, but he was enabled by Governor Pritzker and Illinois Democrats.
For months, I’ve asked Illinois politicians—who proudly defend these sanctuary laws—to explain what controls they have in place to protect our communities. Instead, I’ve been met with silence. Katie was not the first victim, and tragically she won’t be the last. She became another casualty in a deadly game of Russian Roulette created by Illinois’s reckless immigration policies.
Where was the state’s front-end screening?
What safeguards did Governor Pritzker put in place?
Or was this all about replacing the residents who have fled Illinois—keeping population numbers inflated and congressional seats secured?
No one will answer. So I am left to conclude that my daughter was sacrificed on the altar of political power. And while Illinois’s ruling party often appears incompetent, make no mistake—they understood these policies would cost innocent lives. They simply accepted that risk.
We are told our only choices are unvetted, unchecked, unrestricted immigration—no background checks, no health checks—or else we are racists and bigots. As the child of immigrant parents, I completely reject that narrative. These extreme policies have cost thousands of lives. If not for them, Katie would still be here.
Cucul-Bol was not a random individual who made one bad decision. He was an illegal immigrant using aliases, driving drunk—almost certainly not for the first time—moving through our communities with an untreated infectious disease.
Governor Pritzker and Illinois politicians love to call themselves the “compassionate” party. But in our darkest moment, we received nothing from them—not a word of support, not an acknowledgement of Katie’s life, not even a quiet expression of remorse. The Governor insists that anyone who commits a crime will receive due process. What he doesn’t say is that families like mine receive a life sentence without their children. Katie received death, and no due process at all.
Their compassion is selective. Our family did not qualify.
The only responsible path forward is legal, diverse, merit-based immigration—policies that ensure we know who is entering our state, why they are here, and whether they intend to support themselves or become wards of the state.
But this seems to run counter to the desires of Illinois’s ruling class. They never bear the consequences of their own policies. And I am not convinced they want independent, self-sufficient Illinoisans.
As we prepare for the holidays this year, there will be an empty chair at our table—Katie’s chair. And that empty chair was provided to us by Cucul-Bol, his associates, Governor Pritzker, and Illinois Democratic politicians.
I am certain there will be no empty chairs at their tables.